(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plant observation device and method, and more particularly, to a device and method for observing the growth of plants.
(b) Description of the Related Art
To cultivate plants, glass greenhouses or plastic greenhouses are widely used. The inside of a greenhouse is kept at a higher temperature than the outside by solar heating, and most of the solar light passes through glass or plastic and is transmitted to plant bodies, thereby creating a very favorable environment for the growth of plants.
The environmental control of greenhouses needs to be varied depending on developmental stages or growing states of plants, degree of disease and pest incidence, etc. Thus, growth information of plants in greenhouses is the most important factor for determining the level of control. Therefore, for automatic control of greenhouse environments, it is necessary to collect plant growth information (e.g., leaf temperature, leaf moisture, internode length, sclerocauly, chlorophyll content, number of flower sets, number of fruit sets, fruit color, etc.), as well as climatic environment conditions, such as temperature, humidity, etc. in greenhouses.
In general, a method of measurement with the naked eye has been used to observe the growth of plants, growth speed thereof, and so on. Plants grow the most in the summer when sunlight is plentiful. If the weather is very changeable, it is difficult to forecast the total yield for that year, and therefore it is difficult to predict types and amounts of plants for export and types and amounts of imported plants. Moreover, although it is necessary to accurately measure the growth of plants in upcountry regions so as to make observations of plant growth and accurate predictions of yields depending on weather changes, there is no means to accurately measure it at every moment, and this causes the inconvenience of someone having to make observations themselves. Accordingly, there are difficulties in observing and storing accurate plant growth data.
Moreover, problems such as inconsistencies in observation time and limits to the frequency of observation arise in observing the growing state of cultivated plants with human eyes, and there is a high probability of data errors in measurement because a human observer makes a measurement while touching the plants with their hands. Also, a lot of time is spent measuring plant growth information, and there are many inconveniences when exchanging information with researchers or management organizations, and thus measurements are hardly used as research data, thereby making it difficult to predict the total yield for a year.
To solve these problems, a system was disclosed in which plants are observed by zooming in or out on them with an image capture device mounted on the ceiling of a greenhouse. However, this system is incapable of making accurate measurements of the actual growing state of a plant because of the distance between the image capture device and the plant.
Further, a ubiquitous management system, etc. were developed in which sensors nodes for measuring growth environment factors of plants are installed in an area or greenhouse where the plants are produced, the growing state of the plants is monitored using the sensor nodes, collected current state information is transmitted to a mobile terminal through local wireless communication, and the inside of the greenhouse is controlled according to a control signal generated from the mobile terminal.
However, these systems have limitations in measuring the growing state of a plant more accurately because the growing state of the plant is measured by the sensors nodes installed at fixed positions.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.